Wednesday, December 10, 2008

All this talk about bailouts reminds me of hearing Arlo Guthrie singing Tom Paxton's Changing my name to Chrysler many years ago. Today in one of the papers, I read about a guy named Chris Merren, who has been standing down at King & Bay asking for a $250 million bailout, a modest sum from the government for the sake of society. He wants us to help him help us. Mr. Maren runs a wee company selling promotional products, and it seems $250 million would tide him over for a couple weeks.

There seems little doubt that at least in the large part, the big three North American automobile manufacturers are the authors of their own demise. Still, there are a lot of families out there who have been raising families on well-paying automotive jobs which are disappearing fast.

The question is, can these companies turn things around with a healthy bailout, or would it just delay disaster a little longer?

3 comments:

Loved the satire one as well....oh I have such mixed feelings about these "bailouts" - I think they should tar and feather the CEO's and ride them out of town on a rail as they say out in Wyomin'! As our tax dollars once again go upwardly mobile, I wonder when us poor workin' folks are gonna get ours?

How about my friend who is barely hanging on - owns a realty company - where is his bailout? A million other small businesses like his - who bails them out? Has the world gone nuts?